Making a Moon shot Mindset for U.S. Leadership in Biotechnology.

• Author: Kukura, Abigail

General-purpose technologies shape the destiny of nations. Francis Bacon remarked how, during the Renaissance, the printing press, gunpowder and the compass "changed the appearance and state of the whole world ... first in literature, then in warfare and lastly in navigation."

We are on the cusp of another era in which not just one, but multiple technologies will transform national security, economy and society.

Three technologies--artificial intelligence, advanced networks and microelectronics--have emerged as major fronts in an international technology competition between democratic and authoritarian systems. This triad of hardware, software and networks is accelerating digital innovation at a rate perhaps never before seen.

However, the U.S. government woke up slowly to the international competition for these technologies. National commissions, congressional appropriations and White House strategies came only after policymakers recognized the intent and focused efforts by the People's Republic of China to lead the world in these technologies.

Today, the United States has an opportunity to shoot ahead of the target in the next technology battlegrounds. It should start by solidifying its early lead in biotechnology, a general-purpose technology with the potential to transform society. Accelerated by and converging with AI and microelectronics, biotechnology promises the unique opportunity to grow and manipulate the essence of life as we know it.

Obvious application areas include healthcare and pandemic response. But the range of items we can potentially build with biology is truly vast: from biofuels to critical minerals to novel fabrics, metals and construction materials.

The national security stakes of biotechnology leadersbip are also immense. Biotechnology will offer tools to bioengineer solutions to the most vexing challenges. But it will also carry risks ranging from the security of individuals' biodata to the global spread of pathogens. What's more, the nations that lead the world in biotechnology will shape the norms and standards surrounding its development and use.

There are three key technological challenges that nations will have to overcome to establish longterm biotechnology leadership.

First, high-quality data will be an essential input for AI-enabled biotechnology and a limiting factor for the ability to engineer biology.

Second, fundamental understanding of biology is still relatively crude. For biomanufacturing and...